Why Won’t Soviets Let Their People Go?

Over the years, defenders of the Soviet system have offered a variety of explanations as to why so few of the country’s citizens emigrate to the West.

For a long time they claimed that hardly anyone wanted to leave. Then they acknowledged that, yes, there were some who wished to leave and they were free to do so. Much later, Soviet spokesmen amended this to say that there were some who could not be allowed out for security reasons. (During the last summit meeting in Washington, Mikhail S. Gorbachev said that the number of people in this category was 222.) And a final explanation cited a provision in Soviet law that allows a close relative of a would-be emigre to veto that person’s departure.

Now a much more imaginative excuse has emerged. Confronted with the fact that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of citizens of all nationalities would emigrate if given the chance, Soviet spokesmen now argue that the government could never allow them to make such a terrible mistake. This was stated rather forcefully by Yuri Kolosov, the deputy chief of the human rights and culture department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a recent conversation with a British member of the European Parliament.

“How can we allow Soviet people to go to the West?” he asked. “Can you guarantee each of them a home and a job? In Russia these are human rights. If our people go to the West they lose these rights. They are at the mercy of the capitalist system. We would be failing in our duty if we allowed them to take that risk.”

A different, but related, theme was echoed in a letter by five Soviet women to the U.S. Congress, published in the newspaper Izvestia. The five implored Congress not to condemn the provision of the new Soviet emigration law that allows a person to forbid a close relative to emigrate. The letter read in part:

“Is it really permissible not to consider the desire of parents to (keep) their children beside them, to be able to depend on them in their old age and to receive their moral and material support? Is it really permissible to deny children the opportunity to see their parents, to care for them in their old age and benefit from their worldly wisdom? How can one live far from that which is most dear, from that which is the continuation of one’s flesh and blood?”

Few documents could illustrate more graphically the gap in thinking and philosophy between Soviets and Americans. The authors of the letter would appear to believe that:

--It is a basic human right to be able to forbid and thus prevent an adult from emigrating abroad.

--It is the moral duty of a government to enforce this prohibition by refusing to issue exit visas to people whose relatives do not want them to leave.

Both of these statements arguing for continued restrictions on emigration invite the following obvious questions:

Does the Soviet government claim that it has a better idea of what is best for each of its citizens than an individual has himself?

Even if it does, does that give the government the right to forbid a citizen to take a certain action just because it believes that action to be unwise?

Many Soviet citizens who have emigrated have prospered in their new environments abroad. Does the Soviet government believe that it has the right to deny its citizens such an opportunity?

The Soviet answer to each of these questions is an emphatic yes. This reflects an ancient and deep-seated feature of the Russian character--the total submission of the people to the power of the state and a willingness to let the government decide and dictate the course and direction of their lives.

We Americans would agree that the decision to emigrate and leave aged parents behind might in certain cases be an inconsiderate, heartless, even cruel thing to do. But the idea that the government should be empowered to intervene and prevent such an action boggles the mind.

Other, even more fundamental, questions arise out of the ones posed above:

Is all this supposed concern for the welfare of disgruntled citizens not just a means of covering up a most unpleasant fact--that if complete freedom of emigration existed in the Soviet Union as it does in the West, countless people would leave? That freedom of emigration threatens the stability and even the survival of the Soviet regime?

If a country must restrict the movements of its citizens in order to survive, what does that say about the nature of the regime itself?

In the conversation with the British parliamentarian, Kolosov came up with yet another clever pretext for restricting emigration. He said: “You have your export rules which prevent us from acquiring your computers. We have our visa rules which prevent a brain drain and prevent you from luring away our scientists. What’s the difference?”

Obviously Kolosov, like the government that he represents, is unable to see the difference between a human being and a machine.